


I've Got You Under My Skin (But You Won't Let Me In)

by pentaghastly



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Cousin Incest, F/M, Grief, Regret, Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-06
Updated: 2012-04-07
Packaged: 2017-11-03 03:28:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/376607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentaghastly/pseuds/pentaghastly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She sits atop her throne of ice, feet numb, shadows under her eyes, hands shaking ever so slightly.</p>
<p>She was not made for this. Despite what Joffery and Sandor and <em>everyone</em> always told her, Sansa isn’t stupid. Not really. She knows what life she was meant for, a life of a lady, a life of needlework and smiling pretty and pleasing her husband with gentle words and a shared bed. This life was meant for Robb, for Bran, for Rickon, for Arya, for Jon, even. This life was meant for her father, someone strong, someone brave, someone who was not her. </p>
<p>Sansa knows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Jon/Sansa, with allusions to Jon/Robb. I just love Stark lovin', don't ask why XD   
> This fic is going with the theory that R+L=J. Daenerys is still fighting for the throne, but pree much winning it, Jaime and Brienne and Tyrion are all fighting for her, and she's given Sansa dominion over the North.

She sits atop her throne of ice, feet numb, shadows under her eyes, hands shaking ever so slightly.

She was not made for this. Despite what Joffery and Sandor and _everyone_ always told her, Sansa isn’t stupid. Not really. She knows what life she was meant for, a life of a lady, a life of needlework and smiling pretty and pleasing her husband with gentle words and a shared bed. This life was meant for Robb, for Bran, for Rickon, for Arya, for Jon, even. This life was meant for her father, someone strong, someone brave, someone who was not her. 

Sansa knows.

The castle is a ruin. Brienne has told her they will fix it easily, Jaime has offered half of the gold in Casterly Rock to assist, the Dragon Queen has even promised she will help when her throne is secure, but this will be no easy task, and no cheap one, either. All the money in the world cannot heal their sick, or bring back those they have lost to war, or hunger, or things so horrible she cannot even bring herself to think them. No amount can bring Robb back to them, Robb who knew everything, Robb who was smart and courageous and a fighter, Robb who this throne was built for, Robb who this throne belonged to.

It is large, awkwardly large. Sansa is a tall girl ( _woman now,_ she reminds herself), but grief and fear and hunger have caused her to grow frailer, and she thinks she must look half a child in the hulking monstrosity of a chair they have prepared for her. It is not iron like the one in the South -- she made sure of that first thing. But the wood is still rough and hard despite the cushions, the edges still sharp against her fingertips.

Her throne sits in a wasteland atop a pile of corpses, and she does not think she likes the view.

xx

The letter is scrawled in rough, hurried print, a sign of her urgency. He must come, he must reply -- for if he doesn’t, then she is alone in this, truly the last Stark (although she supposes he isn’t a Stark anymore, not really. She supposes he never was, at least by name). 

_Jon,_

_The Wall is fallen. The Others are gone. You have saved us, done your duty, and now you are no longer needed there, but needed somewhere else._

_Come home, Jon. You must. Winterfell cannot rest solely within my hands, not in the state that it has been left. Our home is a ruin, and one Stark cannot bring it together, not on her own. You must come home. Please._

_I need you, brother._

_Sansa_

He isn’t her brother, not anymore. Sansa supposes she should call him cousin, now, for it is Targaryen blood that runs through his veins. There is Stark in there too, yes, but not the way they had all once thought, and it saddens her more than she thought it might. For if Jon Snow is no longer her brother, then she doesn’t have any brothers left at all. The thought itself is enough to bring her near tears.

( _Tears are for children,_ she thinks, _And you are not a child. You were once, but not anymore. Joffery started that, and war did all the rest_ ). 

He isn’t her brother, not anymore, but the words feel right all the same. For he is the closest she has, and now, with a war drawing to a close, with a castle in ruins and a family buried in the crypts, close is the best she will get. 

xx

The day he arrives is the day the snow begins to melt.

A silly coincidence, she thinks. For once the castle begins to look beautiful again, less of a frozen grave and more of the Winterfell she used to know, the one from her childhood. It was as if she could hear Robb’s laughter from the yard, Arya’s shrieks and Rickon’s excited giggles. She could almost see Bran climbing in the towers, and although he couldn’t climb anymore, although he might not even be alive anymore, it was likely none of them were alive anymore, for a moment it almost felt real.

And then her people enter the Main Hall and bow and curtsy and call her Your Grace, and the illusion is dead and gone along with her family. 

The crown on her head is the same that rested atop her brothers, heavy and crude and bronze, and she thinks she must look like a child playing at Queen. She remembers the days when she played such games with Jeyne, games so childish and foolish and pathetic that she thinks she might weep at their memory, just a shadow in her mind now. Sansa pities her young self, pities her naivety and weakness. She had never seen a man die, never been hit, never watched a family memebers bones be placed in a shallow grave. She had never felt the touch of a man’s lips against her own, or the desperate touch of a false friend, a false ally. She had never killed a man herself, watched a mockingbird fly without wings. 

And now, at the age of six and ten, she had experienced all these things or more, and she did not know whether to laugh or cry at the cruelty of it all.

When they announce Jon’s arrival she stands, legs shaky and hands clenched tight with anticipation. For what is she to do when she sees him? She supposes the proper thing to do would be to remain impassive and courteous, but propriety has meant so little to her lately that that hardly seems an option. She is torn between hugging him as she would Robb or Arya or Bran or Rickon, as she would her father or her mother, and falling to her knees and begging for his forgiveness, begging for him to understand, she was just a child, she didn’t know, none of them did (it’s a rather unusual idea, a Queen kneeling to one of her subjects, but even then she finds she does not care, that she could not care less about the courtly ways of society. They have never helped her before, and they shall not help her in this). 

She does neither of those things.

When he enters, it is as if all rational thought leaves her mind. For when he walks through the double door, clad in all black with his brothers (not her brothers, but _his_ ), she does not see a Targaryen, and she does not see a Snow.

When he walks through the double door, the only thing she sees is the ghost of her father. 

Although Jon is younger than Lord Stark had been, slightly taller and his hair slightly darker, and there is a scar running across his cheek ( _we all have scars now_ , she thinks), when he enters she finds herself having to cover her mouth in shock. It is moments before she can recover, and when she does she finds him standing before her -- and then kneeling, kneeling to _her_ , and all at once she realizes how absurd the whole situation is. 

“Rise,” she manages to choke out, a smile taking over her face. It is the first real one she has had in years, the first real one since she became Sansa and killed Alayne along with her father. For here they stand, the last two Starks (for he is a Stark, he always will be, he always has been) and it is the two of them, such an odd pair to be the last, and all she can think is that his knees must be sore from kneeling. “Rise, Jon.” And then, almost as an afterthought, she adds, “My brother.”

It is only then she realizes he is crying -- him, Jon, who had been strong and calm and brave and everything she never was, everything that was Robb and Arya and Bran and Rickon and not her. And then he takes her in his arms and whispers into her hair, so quiet she almost does not hear,

“You look so like him.”

_I am not like him,_ she wants to yell, for she knows she will never measure up to him. But there, in his crown, in front of his throne, leading his people, she finds that she cannot work up the heart to disagree. So instead she only says, “I know,” and for then she thinks that must be good enough.

xx

From then, Sansa makes sure to keep him by her side always.

It is strange, this feeling of dependency she has towards him, for it has something that she has not felt since she was a child. It’s not as if she needs him for help or assistance, since she does her duties as Queen well on her own, and he has taken up his own responsibilities which has made an extraordinary impact on the rebuilding of Winterfell, bringing his fat Maester friend to help the sick, teaching young boys to sword fight in the yard, and much more which Sansa cannot even begin to name. No, she does not need him for assistance, because they both have proven to cope well on her own.

She needs him for the times when she is left in the castle alone, left in a room filled with ghosts. She feels them, all of them, the ghosts of the people that the Bastard of Bolton killed, the ghosts of her mother, her father, her siblings. She feels them brush against the back of her neck, whisper words into her ears of death and suffering, hears their laughter ring throughout the halls. She hears them, and she knows Jon hears them too, but when his fingers twine themselves through hers she finds she cannot hear them quite as much, cannot hear them at all.

They dine together most every night in Sansa’s chambers, although they don’t talk much -- for what is there to say, when all you knew and loved, all that help you together had died? Sometimes he tells her about the Wall, about fighting the Others, about travelling with the wildlings. She listens, entranced by his words, hypnotized by the tales of winter, true winter, but tells no stories of her own.

Until he asks about the Vale. That is when she shakes her head, and looks him dead in the eyes.

(Eyes so unlike her own, a perfect match to his raven hair, a perfect match to her father’s.)

“It is not a good story, I’m afraid,” she tells him, voice hard and unwavering. “There are no heroes, no knights with magic swords or wonderful adventures. In my story near every character is a player, a villain, and the only hero is death. I have no tales of glory and honor to tell you -- you would not be proud of the things I did, Jon. You would not love me if you heard what I have done to survive.”  
But he grabs her hand with his burnt one, the rough touch surprisingly comforting against her own paper skin, paler than ever before. “You are my sister, Sansa. Perhaps not by blood, but my sister all the same. I will love you always.”

So she tells him everything.

Nothing is sugar-coated, or left out, or hidden. She tells him of Ser Dontos in the godswood and the purple amethysts, of his death and Petyr’s rescue, of how she became Alayne Stone, of how her ‘father’ had kissed her and killed her aunt, how he tried to marry her off to Harry the Heir, how he had touched her and used her while Harry did the same. And she tells him of how she killed them both, and how she had smiled as their bodies fell through the moon door. 

_“They got in a fight,”_ she had said, _“My father, always trying to protect me, and he felt Harry was doing me wrong. And so they got in a fight, and they threw each other out.”_

And they had believed her. Of course they had, for who will not replace a beautiful girl with teary eyes and a saddened expression? _Poor Alayne,_ they had said, and when she had revealed herself to the Dragon Queen, when her identity was out in the open, they had said the same. _Poor Sansa,_ they had said, their voices and eyes filled with a relentless pity, and she had hated them for it more than she had hated anyone, more than she had hated Joffery. 

For she didn’t need pity, not in the least. What she needed was swords and armies, and one could not win a war built on pity alone.

She had told Jon all of this, told him without pausing or crying or showing any emotion other than anger, a slight flame burning beneath her blue eyes, and when she had finished telling him, he did not say a word. He did not tell her he was sorry, or tell her that he understood, or tell her that he wished he could have helped. Instead he squeezed her hand and returned to his meal, eyes down, silent, and she thinks she could have loved him for it. 

xx


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She is no fool. Sansa knows the feeling of home, remembers the warmth of a mother’s smile or a brother’s embrace. She knows and her people know, and they know that things will never be for them as they were before. Perhaps for their children, but not for them. Home will always be a distant memory of a dream, shrouded in shadows and taken over by the desecration of war, and so although she allows herself to smile, allows herself to be happy, she does not allow herself to hope. _The lone wolf dies while the pack survives,_ that was what her father would say, and she thinks she has never heard a funnier lie in her life. For now she is living proof against that, is she not?

xx

Brick by brick, the castle is rebuilt.

The Dragon Queen has kept true to her word and provided him with all they could possibly desire, as promised. Sansa thinks she might be the loveliest person she has ever seen, but there is something about the young ruler that frightens her, something about her presence that makes her wary. Perhaps it is that the fire that burned beneath her violet eyes was so strikingly similar to one she had seen before on a different Queen, a Queen with hair of woven gold and eyes like emeralds, and a smile that was filled with secrets and lies and poison.

 _Queen Cersei is dead,_ Sansa reminds herself, _Daenerys made sure of that as well._

In any case, with gold from King’s Landing and Casterly Rock, and the help of Jon by her side, Sansa finds things coming together better than she could have hoped. There is food for her people, wine and ale for them to warm their frozen bones and roofs under which they can sleep without having to listen to the constant howl of the wind and the wolves. There is a hall for them to have feasts and an armory for their steel, and the yard in which the hopeful squires and knights can train. It is almost as it was before, almost as it should be.

_Almost._

(But she is no fool. Sansa knows the feeling of home, remembers the warmth of a mother’s smile or a brother’s embrace. She knows and her people know, and they know that things will never be for them as they were before. Perhaps for their children, but not for them. Home will always be a distant memory of a dream, shrouded in shadows and taken over by the desecration of war, and so although she allows herself to smile, allows herself to be happy, she does not allow herself to hope. _The lone wolf dies while the pack survives,_ that was what her father would say, and she thinks she has never heard a funnier lie in her life. For now she is living proof against that, is she not?)

Many an afternoon she spends in the godswood, sitting where her father used to sit with his greatsword, pretending that she can still feel him there. And she can, in a way -- this godswood was always his, always belonged to him, and she thinks that if she tries hard enough, squeezes her eyes closed and clenches her hands tight, that he might be sitting beside her.

It is childish, and she is not a child. She is a Queen, a woman grown, and yet still she goes.

Jon finds her there one afternoon, eyes clamped shut, pale hands digging desperately into the wooden surface of the log she is perched on, muttering to herself. She is not even aware of his presence until he sits beside her, placing his good hand atop her own.

“I quite admire you, you know. For still being able to pray,” he tells her, voice barely above a whisper as if he fears that someone might be listening. “I find I cannot quite remember how. It’s been so long since I have seen a point in it -- the gods have never been much help to me. To either of us, it would seem.” There is a bitterness, an anger in his voice which she hasn’t heard before, not from him, but she does not question it. War and death and grief have changed them all, it would seem, and Jon must be no exception. 

“I do not come to pray,” she admits, although he doesn’t look shocked when she says so. “Be quiet for a moment, you’ll understand.” And he listens.

(She is still not used to people listening to her; it has been so long since she had control, so long since she had a say in anything, since her voice and her words made a difference. But she knows that he does not listen to her because she is his Queen and he must, not like everyone else. He listens because he chooses to, and she thinks she likes that most of all.)

And there it is, moments later. A whisper in the winds of winter, almost a prayer, a greeting, a farewell. _“Jon,”_ the tree whispers, _“Jon,”_ and when he smiles she thinks that he might be about to cry.

“I came here upon the day of my return, to see if I could feel father near, feel any of him left,” she explains, voice soft and sweet with a quiet sadness. “And when I came, I sat right here and I heard it. At first I thought he was somewhere in the trees, in the forest, _anywhere_ , and then I realized that he _was_ the tree. Impossible, isn’t it? But you heard it for yourself, so you know that however impossible, it must be true.” Sansa pauses again, unsure of what to say (always so unsure, still such a child, and she hates herself for it) and clears her throat. “I just hope that wherever he is, he’s happy.”

“He is,” Jon says, squeezing her hand in his, and although she does not believe him, not really, not how she wants to, she smiles anyways.

xx

They sup together most every night in her chamber, Brienne the ever-watchful guard dog by her door, Jaime not far behind, and although Sansa does not think she is in any immediate danger, certainly not with Jon and Ghost by her side, their presence is always a comfort. 

The large woman has been of as much help as her brother ( _cousin,_ she reminds herself firmly, for she keeps on forgetting that fact). After becoming her sworn shield, Brienne has hardly spent a moment out of the Queen’s presence, always watching, always guarding. She knows how the woman feels about her mother, for it was hard not to love Lady Stark, and she knows how the woman must see her. A little Catelyn, needing to be guarded, be rescued, be saved.

(She doesn’t need saving, though. Not anymore. Sansa learned long ago that true knights don’t exist, they never have, and although she thinks Brienne is as close as one might get, she has learned to save herself.)

With the door closed and the curtains opened to let in the moonlight, for once the room has almost begun to feel cozy, feel like home. However, she still cannot shake the feeling that it belongs to her parents, that she is just a defenseless child curling up under her parents furs, patiently but desperately awaiting their return. Jon swears to her that it will get easier, that she will be able to feel at home soon enough, but she doesn’t think it will. Winterfell will never be hers, not as it should, and that thought scares her more than anything.

With her hand buried in the scruff of Ghost’s neck, the wolf humming contentedly by her side, Sansa gives the man across from her a curious glance. “If I asked you something, would you answer it true, no matter what it was?” She knows he would, five moons of his presence has been enough to teach her that much, but still, she feels as if she must ask.

He answers as expected, a crooked smile on his face despite the concern that is shadowed in his charcoal eyes. “You know that I would,” and she knows.

“Have you ever been in love, Jon?”

It’s a strange question, she knows, but not one that’s entirely random. It’s something she’s wondered about since the first night he returned, when she heard serving girls giggling about him and saw her own ladies-in-waiting flush under his gaze. She wonders, not because she thinks it has any important significance, but because she would like to know how it feels to be in love, to love someone for real, not for a title or for a throne or for a game. And she thinks if anyone would know, if anyone would tell her the truth, get down to the core and to the bottom, she thinks it would be Jon.

“I have,” he answers, and she finds she is not surprised by this as well. He always seemed like the type who would fall in love quite easily, hard and fast, and she thinks he knows this as well as she.

But she wants to know more -- she must. So she leans forward and places her head in her hands, thinking she must look like no more than a little girl. “What was it like, loving someone? What was she like?” Sansa only hopes he isn’t offended or upset by her choice of conversation, and if he is he doesn’t show it. He only smiles and leans back in his chair, giving her a long look, but not a hard one.

“Wonderful,” he tells her, and although his face is near impassive his voice is thick with emotion. “Hair like yours, maybe a little bit lighter, a touch curlier, and eyes like yours too. Clear blue like the sky, like the most beautiful pool you’ve ever seen. Beautiful, too, but I’m guessing you picked up on that.” His smile is sad, and she knows then that this woman must be dead, and all she can think is _‘Poor Jon,’_ , even though she hates herself for pitying him. 

And then, because she must know more, no matter how much she wishes she could stop herself, “How did she die?”

“Arrows,” he replies, and she thinks of Robb, Robb who had died of arrows as well, and she must make herself so she does not cry. Jon looks to be in no better shape, and she thinks the last time she saw him in such a state must have been when they were children. She wants to reach out and touch him, comfort him, _anything_ , for this is her fault, after all, she asked the damn question, but his hands are on his lap and he is continuing on. “I should have been there. I should have stopped it. But I was a Brother of the Nights Watch, and I did nothing.”

She places her hand on his knee, his skin cold to the touch even through his clothing, and she thinks that winter must have frozen him from the inside out. “There was nothing you could have done, Jon. Nothing any of us could have done. All men must die.”

He looks at her then, _really_ looks at her, looks at her in a way that makes her extraordinarily uncomfortable and self-aware. He looks at her as if he is seeing her for the first time, as if she is something shiny and wonderful and fascinating and new, looks at her as if he is seeing past the ice and frost that covers her bones, seeing into something which she finds she cannot see herself. It is a way of looking that both flusters and frustrates her, and so before he can look any longer she finds herself grabbing his hand and leading him towards the glass in her room, positioning them so he stands to her left, both perfectly trapped within the iron frame.

“We look like them, don’t we?” she asks, although it’s not so much meant to be a question, for there is no question that what she has said is true. In the mirror she does not see the image of Jon Snow and Sansa stark, of two people, barely more than children, playing castle with a ruined kingdom. Instead she sees her parents, Lord and Lady Stark, red hair and blue eyes and radiance and raven hair and raven eyes and a long face, but on both faces is a smile, the smile of the North, the smile of a wolf.

“We do,” he replies, and she thinks she can her laughter in his voice when he says it.

xx

That night is the first time he shares her furs. 

It is not what she had thought it might be (for she had thought of it before, she must admit; fleetingly, but the thought had still been there). It is not soft or gentle or loving, not the kind of joining that the bards sang of and ladies giggled about. It is not tender and sweet, quiet and delicate, and for that she has never been more grateful.

Instead it is hard and fast and rough, and as he covers her body with his own she has to wonder how the even ended up there. One moment they stood in front of the mirror, the next they tore each other’s clothes off like animals, like wolves. One moment they stood, the next his mouth was against her neck, teeth nipping her flesh, hands groping, feeling, _pleading_. She did not think that one could ask with their hands alone, but in this moment, Jon Snow has done a better job of that than anyone.

And then they are on her bed, atop her furs, pale skin glistening in the moonlit room. They fit well together, the two of them, but that is something she has learned long ago, something only made more clear now. She did not know how badly she needed this until it happened, and now that it was she found she could not wait for it, not much longer, not at all.

“Now,” she begged him, lips against his own. “Now, Jon, _now_ ,” and perhaps it is her saying his name that sends him over the edge, but it is not long after when he is entering her, and then he is inside her, and nothing else matters, for there is nothing else.

Nothing else but them two, the last two Starks (he is not a Stark, not really, but she thinks he must be), they are the only ones left, the last wolves standing. The lone wolf dies while the pack survives, and they have become the pack, each other’s only hope for survival. He chants her name like a prayer, voice filled with reverence and praise and hope, something she has not her for what must be years, something which feels like forever, and the sound of his voice alone is enough to cause her body to tense, to allow her to finally find her release, after all these years of searching.

He is not long to follow, and when he does he stays atop her, face pressed into her chest as if listening for her heartbeat. “Beautiful,” he whispers, and though she feels as if he is not speaking of her, not really, she does not say a word.

It is not perfect. It is not home. It is not complete. It never will be. But she thinks, perhaps, if she tries, it just might be enough.


End file.
